One thing movie studios can’t escape is the necessity of copyright law, which means they have to reveal some things in advance. For the upcoming Batman/Superman movie, they’ve had to reveal a few titles. Some of them are good. Some of them… not so much.

Fusible did some poking around and discovered two things: Warner Brothers had registered a bunch of possible titles in a few places, and that whoever writes the titles at WB has given up on their job.

Here they are, from best to worst:

Man of Steel: Shadow of the NightMan of Steel: Beyond DarknessMan of Steel: The Darkness WithinMan of Steel: The Blackest HourMan of Steel: Knight FallsMan of Steel: Darkness FallsMan of Steel: Black of KnightMan of Steel: Battle the Knight

And we’re not using World’s Finest because….? Anybody? Anybody at all?

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Of the bunch, which are admittedly all kind of terrible and cheesy, at least “Shadow of the Night” makes some form of sense, especially if they tweak it to “Shadow of the Knight”, or hell, go with the DC title reference and make it “Shadow Of The Bat”. And “Beyond Darkness” is amusing because it’s probably the title of a terrible Superman/Star Trek crossover fanfic.

The rest all range from middling to “bad Japanese translation of the movie’s title.” It’s unlikely WB will use all (or possibly any) of these titles; mostly studios do this to cover all the bases and ensure nobody can jack their copyright to put out an Asylum-level knock-off of their movie. Still, we kind of hope that these won’t even get slapped onto a toy or a cheaply made video game; some fates are just too undignified, even for shoddy merchandise.

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I’m a little puzzled by the focus on Man of Steel. While the movie wasn’t awful, it wasn’t NEARLY as successful as the batman movies. Really seems like Batman/Superman: World’s Finest would not only be a more accurate title, but it puts the guy most people “really” want to see where he belongs, at the front.

Oh and I get that, its also why I’m puzzled by why you put “Knight” in the title at all, if they are trying to make it a “clean break” from the old series. It just seems like, to me, that Batman’s wider fanbase is the larger or the two even before those movies.

I should have known it was you all the time. I should have asked myself, ‘Who’s the man so rich, so insane, that he could dress up like a bat, fly around a billion dollar plane, and put a kid in tights in the line of fire of the Joker?’ Only one man. That’s you, Bruce Wayne! So I’m here to deliver you one vigilante ass-whupping!

I’d still prefer it if we got a Superman movie that was about Superman and the regular cast of Superman characters and villains rather than one that makes all of that secondary to “OMFG Batman is in this!”